1) Universal, standard-coordinate cyberworld--the Multiverse. Everybody
hooks into one big happy world with universal coordinates. Portals exist
at particular coordinates, and go from a space to whichever space is
"physically" contiguous.
Whether you need a central "zoning board" is not immediately clear. A
set of standards may be sufficient.
2) Various cyberworlds with their own defined physics that don't connect
to one another. Like MUDs--Star Trek worlds, Swords and Magic worlds,
etc., where whoever sets the standards defines the laws of physics
(combat, object generation, etc.). Here again, you normally want a
continous set of coordinates.
In this case, you *do* want a central zoning board that decides what
goes where, because the world is under central control, although some
of its locales and objects may be distributed.
3) A distributed world, with no central authority. This is the world
in which portals can lead to and from various places, and I could have
a door from my living room that takes me to the middle of the town
square.
There's no reason this world would necessarily want any kind of
central coordinates, or general means of establishing what links
to what. This is more like the Web, and like what we'll get with VRML
1.0.
My question is whether you could define a system in which (3) is the
general case, and (2) is a specific case of it. That is, define a
sytem that is generally freewheeling and chaotic, but could be
bound to a more specific set of "world rules," and a coordinate
system. If so, then (1) would just be a really popular, more
distributed version of (2).
--Andy
[email protected]